Looking after Mother

Looking after Mother

Friday 13 April 2007 19.07 EDT
First published on Friday 13 April 2007 19.07 EDT

The working day has run on longer than planned and I find myself still at work at 8pm. I'd been meaning to visit my mother all day, either popping out at lunchtime or on the way home. Now it's so late I'm in two minds. Perhaps she will have gone to bed already. I'd better ring her first.

The phone rings and rings but just as I'm about to give up she answers, sounding faint. "Have you gone to bed?" I ask.

"No. No," she says.

"Is it too late to call in?"

"Well I wish you would," she says. "I'm on the floor."

"What! What do you mean you're on the floor?"

"I'm stuck," she says. "I can't get up."

I race over and let myself in. I find her sitting propped up against her bed. The television is on full blast, she's fully dressed and looks reasonably contented, if somewhat baffled.

"What on earth happened, Mum?"

"I couldn't get off my chair. I got stuck. I had to slide on to the ground and slide into the bedroom on my bottom." So she says, but I'm wondering if her old friend the whisky bottle has played a part.

I try several times to haul her up. It looks as if it should be easy but she's much heavier than I imagine, and soon we're gasping and giggling like schoolgirls. But her hands are freezing and the first priority is to warm her up with a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle. As her face begins to acquire some colour, I go in hunt of the evidence.

There's an empty half-bottle of whisky in the bin, as there often is. It's not always whisky, often red wine or even cider. The carer finds the empty bottles hidden away in cupboards. Not living with her, it is hard for me to keep check but the carer worries about it.

How much of a problem is it? Certainly her memory is worse when she's had a few. "One glass is good for you but you mustn't have too much," the consultant told her last time we saw him. "What's your tipple?" she asked him in response. But what's the point of this kind of advice to someone whose short-term memory is so poor? Even if she wanted to remember the advice, she has the perfect excuse that she can't remember having one drink so has another. Anyway, perhaps the enjoyment of a drink is one reason why my mother is so much more cheerful than so many of her contemporaries. She certainly has a great, if not to say enviable, capacity, as she demonstrated at Christmas this year when staying for several days. On Boxing Day, some of us took off for Kempton Park, leaving my mother home alone. I carefully prepared a lunch tray with sandwiches and a third of a bottle of white wine. Rather meanly I hid the bottle of really special red that was open but we hadn't drunk the day before, putting it aside for the evening.

On our return we found her sunk low on the sofa. "I'm bushed," she says cheerfully. On the side was the tray with the sandwiches uneaten but the wine drunk. Oh well, I reckoned, no harm done. That was until I discovered the bottle of special red, which was now half empty. That wasn't so good, on an empty stomach too. But fair enough, it was Christmas. Over the evening meal, however, I try to control her intake. "Oh come on," she says plaintively, holding out her glass and I relent a bit. At the end of the meal we get out the half bottle of very good port left over from Christmas Day. To my horror it is empty. That's a third of white, half of red, half a bottle of port and still drinking. My daughter's boyfriend, who is in the music business, knows a thing or two about excess, having been once associated with Pete Doherty. Even he is impressed. "She hasn't!" he said in complete disbelief.

Recently I met the workman who does odd jobs for people in the flats where Mum lives. "He's my friend, aren't you?" Mum kept saying. "I am indeed," he replied, then turned to me and winked "only I can't keep up with her drinking." In an ideal world I'd keep a closer eye. I know it can't be good and maybe it's responsible for some of the unexplained falls. But it's hard to condemn. The other day I looked in her bag to see what she'd been doing. There was a receipt from the local pub, for a glass of house red and a salmon starter. If I get to 83, I thought, and it's wine and salmon for lunch rather than meals on wheels I'll be doing all right.